


HUNGER

by bloodwork



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23655490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodwork/pseuds/bloodwork
Summary: Alex Hawthorne is going to kill Felix Rockwell if it's the last damn thing they do.
Relationships: The Captain/Felix Millstone
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. the famine.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm hungry so i figured it's probably time to post the fic i've been writing about being hungry
> 
> i have like 200,000 words of fic written but i've been procrastinating posting them. so here is some of those 200,000 words.
> 
> also, for the sake of clarity - "alex hawthorne" in all of my fics is the name of the captain (aka the character you play as during the game, the unplanned variable, the sole survivor, etc. etc.). hopefully that clears up whatever confusion you may have going into my outer worlds fics.

Alex Hawthorne sat at the bar, a shot glass of Iceberg Aged between their cupped hands. It was a strange substitute for someone who was used to the long-standing empires of Jack Daniels and Jameson, but the people at Halcyon had seemingly forgotten such distilleries entirely. Or, more likely, the HHC didn’t see enough profit in them, so they’d abandoned them, left them behind on Earth as the transferral of humanity from their homeworld to this custom-tailored solar system took place.

Just like they’d abandoned a lot of things, Alex thought bitterly.

And bitter described the whiskey in their grasp, too. It had always been their go-to for a drink. They craved the burn all the way down their throat, and then the firecracker-coated-in-honey warmth that pleasured their insides. This ‘glacial-aged’ shit tasted more like someone had chipped a chunk off an iceberg, spiked it with nondescript liquor, and melted it all down. It didn’t resemble whiskey one bit, but Alex kept drinking it anyway. It was the best they were going to get, especially with their finances being what they were and the 17th not nearly prosperous enough to get anything besides the bottom of the barrel -- literally. To be frank, Alex was stunned they had even managed to secure the Iceberg.

They threw it back, their eyes falling on the aetherwave screen as it lit up with the same news that had been playing for the past god-knows-how-long. Alex had stopped paying attention. Besides … the ridiculous  _ child _ who was always on the aetherwave nowadays did nothing for them. Nothing for anyone, really, even though he easily could have.

Out of the corner of their eye, they could see Parvati Holcomb, who was sitting next to them, elbows on the bar, sign her displeasure. “Can’t say I’m too thrilled to see his face on the screen either,” she said, her hands making the signs as naturally as if she’d been born doing so. Her eyes were narrowed as she stared up at the screen which, thank Law for small miracles, was so old and in need of such repairs that there was only a picture at all about half the time, and of that half, they were lucky to get color. It was like trying to read a book through a whirring engine blade.

Alex heaved a sigh and leaned over to take a sip out of Parvati’s soda. The latter said nothing -- just glared up at the person on the screen, and the lower third bordering the bottom:

**CHAIRMAN’S SON ASSURES GENERAL PUBLIC NEW FOOD-PRODUCTION TECH ON THE HORIZON**

It was a lie, of course, just like everything that came out of that son of a bitch’s mouth. Alex felt a swirling in their gut, and it wasn’t the whiskey. It was a hatred that came from as deep down as a feeling could possibly go. The sort of hatred that ran through their veins like blood, sewn into their skin so deeply that one could not hope to remove it from them. The sort of hatred that said that if they were ever in a room alone with him, it would end in only one of them leaving intact.

The bartender, a cute little thing named Viral, with teal hair and a dark grey horizontal stripe across their face, rested one arm on the bar, following Alex’s and Parvati’s eyes up to the screen. They turned slightly for Alex, who they were standing in front of, to be able to see the sign as they said, “What a jerk, huh?”

“More than a jerk,” Alex signed. “That’s way too nice of a word for what he is.”

Viral flashed a smile. “It can also mean  _ asshole. _ But I try not to be explicit about my swearing.”

“Still too nice of a word.”

Alex and Viral were friendly enough for this to be the moment when Viral would normally pour them another whiskey and claim this one was on the house. But both of them knew that the 17th was Viral’s only mode of income, and that they couldn’t afford to be giving out free drinks, even to someone who had as much of Viral’s respect as Alex did. They quietly acknowledged it, and Alex held out their wrist for Viral to scan and take the bits out of their account. Not really bits they could afford, but they’d dry up soon anyway, so why not spend them on something that would bring them, well, if not happiness, if not satisfaction, then … distraction?

Problem was, nothing could distract anyone from what was going on in Byzantium. They’d had to change their whole lives in order to adapt to it.

See, neither Alex nor Parvati nor Viral had been born deaf. None of them currently  _ were  _ deaf. None of them were even hard of hearing. There was a far more sinister reason that they had taken to communicating entirely in sign language, and why Parvati and Viral wore earpieces that completely blocked out any external sound, meaning they hadn’t heard the outside world in years, living in a quiet, secluded, isolated blank space in which the only sounds they could hear were their breathing.

And the reason for it was the spoiled rich chairman's boy on the aetherwave screen, who oozed confidence and charisma and something else that only people like him could project. Something that made you almost desperate to please him, even before he used his not-so-secret weapon.

As Alex headed home from the bar with Parvati by their side, they swore, just like they did every single morning when they woke up and every single night before they went to sleep, that they would be the one to hold a knife to Felix Rockwell’s throat and watch him take his last dying breaths.

* * *

Their apartment in Roseway was little more than a hole in the wall with a bed. As per the usual with anyone not living in Byzantium, cardboard boxes on the street would almost have been nicer real estate. Alex wasn’t going to try and delude themselves into thinking better of it by saying “at least it’s home” or something ridiculous like that. It wasn’t home. It never had been. Home was a comfortable place you felt safe at with people you cared about. Alex went to bed every night with a knife gripped in one hand. Probably a bad idea on account of all the nightmares that constantly plagued their sleep, but they refused to be unarmed even while unconscious --  _ especially _ while unconscious. They were quite the fighter while awake -- had to be, to survive in a place like Terra-2 -- so they had to cover themselves while they were asleep, too, at their weakest.

You didn’t sleep with a knife in one hand, starting awake at every little sound, when you felt like you were at home.

So this wasn’t home.

It was a building, at least. There was a roof, which was more than Alex could say for some of the places they’d holed up in before they found Parvati and ran into a little extra side work, just enough to keep the bits in the positive, and to once in a while treat themselves to a shot of whiskey, bitter as it was.

And this building, this place that wasn’t home, was currently housing ten people, including Alex and Parvati, all of who were sitting on the floor, because Alex didn’t have the bits for chairs for this place, and of course they couldn’t be having this meeting outside, they could hardly even be having it inside, except that Byzantium were so far up their own asses that they didn’t see a random apartment in Roseway, or the people in it, as being anything worth their time. Which would, of course, be their downfall, if Alex had anything to say about it.

“We need to move soon,” Alex said. They’d never dimmed their passion in anything that they’d done, including using sign language, and it showed in the exuberant gestures they made, often overshooting the signs, though not by so much they couldn’t be understood at all. “Every single day that goes by, we let them amass more and more power. Pretty soon we won’t be able to get into Byzantium at all.”

Della, the former owner of the 17th before she’d passed it on to Viral, cracked a smile, against the atmosphere in the room, charged with Alex’s energy. “I think we all know you’d be able to get into the city no matter what. You could slink your way into my stockroom, rob it blind, and be halfway across the planet before anyone knew you’d even crossed the threshold.”

“She’s right, boss,” said Parvati. “You’re the slyest person I ever set eyes on. Comes in real handy for the situations we get ourselves into, I should say.”

“Parvati, what did I tell you about calling me ‘boss’?”

“Sorry, boss.”

It was a running joke between the two of them. It was easy to add ‘boss’ to the end of sentences, and Parvati, who had initially done it completely seriously, had now taken to ending quite a few sentences with it, just to see the look on Alex’s face, which was never angry, just a playful frustration. They were close enough that Parvati knew she could count on Alex to tell her when they were actually upset with her.

“I’m serious, though,” Alex continued, unwilling to be distracted from the point at hand. “We need to … I don’t know, even if we’re not going to launch an attack or something, we need to at least make a supply run.”

“Heard it’s going downhill in Byzantium, too.” This voice came from Dameron, who worked in the maintenance tunnels of Byzantium, as undercover as the group was able to get with Byzantium’s high security and desperation to protect the upper class’s way of living, even in the midst of a system-wide famine. He shoved a hand through dark hair before signing, “From the shit I hear from the other workers, you know, the ones that get put up in all them fancy workers’ quarters, Crane’s diet toothpaste is near about the only thing keeping them going. That and other appetite suppressants. But then again, them rich folk barely eat anyway. Trying to lord it over the rest of us that they can afford to eat but choose not to.”

There was an anger in his voice that everyone in this room could relate to. It had Alex so steamed they saw red whenever they thought about it. Sometimes they were glad their parents were dead. It meant they didn’t have to see the shitshow this place had turned into, although surely it had been like this for quite some time now. Not this bad, though. Not to the point people regularly referred to the situation not as a food shortage but as a famine.

“If we could just take him out …” Alex said, half to themselves.

“You talkin’ about the chairman’s boy, boss?” Parvati asked, placing one hand on Alex’s knee in a show of support.

Alex nodded, still seeming a hundred miles away.

“Not sure why you’re so caught up on Felix Rockwell, Alex,” said Mendez, one of Alex’s neighbors in the Roseway Apartments. He bit his lip. “Ain’t like he’s the only one doing all of this. Taking him out just means people--”

“--get angry,” Alex cut in, flashing their fingers so furiously that Mendez had no choice but to fall silent. “If people get angry, change happens. Problem is they  _ can’t _ get angry on account of Felix-fucking-Rockwell--” they spelled the ‘fucking’ out as if it was part of his name, “singing them those sweet nothings. So they’re content to just live in this shit like there ain’t a thing better than this.  _ That’s _ why I’m so focused on Felix Rockwell.”

All of them were silent. Well, more silent than they usually were. Alex was right, of course. There were other things they could be planning, but they needed their leader’s support behind it, and obviously Alex wasn’t going to focus on that until Felix was taken care of. So it was best for them to plan how they were going to get Alex in to dispose of Felix. Then, in the confusion and before Byzantium and the chairman had a chance to regroup and form a new strategy, they could strike again and bring the Board to its knees.

Ideally.

Except it was kind of difficult to believe that the ten of them were going to make any sort of difference. They had friends on the fringe, this was only the core group, of course, but it wasn’t like they had an army, and most people were too affected by Felix’s power to even be able to think for themselves, let alone want to overthrow the tyrannical government they lived under and take what was rightfully theirs. It seemed a task too great to even entertain the thought of accomplishing it. But Alex was so enthusiastic about it that it was hard not to fall in with them. Besides, it wasn’t like things could get any worse. At this point, death was almost preferable. So the people in this room with Alex were okay with continuing on. And hey, maybe things really would work out for the best if they went through with all of this. Why not rally behind the only choice that seemed to have any chance of a positive outcome?

And Alex was a really good person. It was ridiculous, to not follow their dream, when the meeting came to a close and Alex shared what little food they and Parvati had been storing up with their friends. Even with how skinny the two of them were, the way that every one of Alex’s ribs could be counted, the way shirts that had used to fit them now hung off of them like they were several sizes too big, they still only thought of others.

So what they wanted to do for now, that was okay. Everyone here would help them in their goal to get rid of Felix Rockwell, and they’d figure it out from there.

Something told them Alex would be quick to figure out what they wanted to do after that, anyway.


	2. the infiltration.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex finds herself a very small fish in a very big pond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait, i'm sure you can imagine why it's been that way, LOL. like i said, i have a zillion words of this written but i'm one of those people who doesn't feel motivated to post them until someone gives feedback etc idk i just like knowing people are reading and enjoying and i LOVE discussing my work with people so :')
> 
> thank you to cas, especially, who left a comment on my last chapter - literally the second i got it i made up my mind to post the next chapter when i got home. so thank u cas you're a real one. this is genderfluid alex/felix so i'm sorry to somewhat disappoint you but hey, they'll be male-identifying for about a third of the time, so there's that, i guess ? LOL
> 
> oh, also, this has been in my head CONSTANTLY lately but to the alex/felix/max shippers y'all should be calling your ship Triple X like that's way too good a name to not be used
> 
> one more thing - i take a little bit of liberty with the tech from the outer worlds just because i like adapting it to my AU and also because if i stress myself out about getting everything right i will probably die. rest assured the basic stuff is still the same but for example i dont know exactly where the holographic shroud goes and i don't really care to exhaust myself looking through fan forums and stuff for it so i just do it my own way. i love the outer worlds but not to the point i have to have every single little detail right, sorry. that's reserved for borderlands 3 and like far cry 5 and fallout and stuff.
> 
> okay thanks for listening please PLEASE review for the love of god let me know what you liked, didn't like, what you had for dinner, etc. let's have a conversation!!! the next chapter will be longer. ok thanks bye

Alex couldn’t believe her luck.

She’d expected it to take another few months to get into Byzantium. Even the maintenance tunnels were well-policed, if not by humans, then at least by automechanicals, disappointing in performance as they tended to be, they would still leave a nasty mark or even incapacitate Alex if they caught her at a bad time, when she wasn’t prepared. And unlike humans, knives didn’t do much to pierce the skin of an automechanical. Just pissed them off, really, and made them turn their weapons up from stun to … well, Alex didn’t want to think about what an automechanical could do to her at full power.

But Dameron had come through. He’d heard from a friend of a friend (of a friend of a friend) that Byzantium was supposed to be getting a shipment of medicine in -- and not just Byzantium, but the chairman’s penthouse. Which meant that if Alex played her cards right, she had a ride straight up to the very place she’d been dying to get to for the past two years.

Parvati wrinkled her nose when they got the news. “That’s a special kind of medication. Ain’t somethin’ the general populace would need. You said it was--?” and she flashed out the spelling of the medicine too quickly for Alex to follow. When Dameron nodded to confirm, Parvati whistled. “Don’t rightly know much about medicine, but I’ve heard about that one. Friend of a distant cousin needed it but couldn’t get it on account of it being astronomically expensive. I … I didn’t know the chairman’s boy was sickly …”

“Doesn’t matter,” Alex said immediately, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “I don’t give a shit if he’s on his deathbed. He’s hurt too many people for me -- or anyone -- to start feeling sorry for him now.”

Not for the first time, Parvati worried about Alex. Her anger was understandable, and justifiable, but it consumed her so wholly that Parvati wasn’t sure what would be left once she had burned through it. And she was worried, really, what was going to become of Alex once she’d gotten up to Rockwell’s suite and had her target in her sights. She knew Alex was okay for dying for her cause, but Parvati was sure going to miss her. Unless of course she could sneak back out, quick and sly as a fox, like she was known for, but this was the height of security in Byzantium. She was lucky if she got  _ in _ the place, even with the holographic shroud doodad that Dameron was showing her.

“It attaches to your temple, like this,” he was saying, and it was really a chore to speak and hold the shroud at the same time, but they’d all been signing to each other long enough to pretty much make out what the other was saying, even with only half the sign visible. He attached the palm-sized device to Alex’s temple, and fiddled with something, and within a second Alex changed from the five-foot-nothing fiery-haired little sprite she was into a five-foot-seven woman who seemed dainty as glass with curly brown hair that fell halfway down her back. Her clothes had changed, too -- where once they would have been considered “apocalypse rustic”, a ragged cloak and shirt and pants made mostly out of patchwork, even though they’d been new at  _ some _ point, now they were completely different, a tight pencil skirt, leggings, heeled boots, and the sort of blouse one might expect from someone in the medical profession.

“This … is  _ majorly _ fucking weird,” said Alex, looking down at herself.

Dameron snickered to himself. “Now, the cartridge for the shroud ain’t anyone important. Just gets you into Byzantium and past the security up front. There’s a timer on it, and it has to charge, so make sure it don’t run out while you’re in eyesight of anyone, or else you’ll have to persuade ‘em you’re who you say you are, understand?”

“And this will get me up to Felix Rockwell’s room?”

“Close enough that you can dispatch security.”

Parvati was chewing on her thumbnail worriedly. “We don’t know how much security there is, though. Alex could be overwhelmed. And if they have weapons …”

“I’ve got it, Parvati.”

Parvati had never seen Alex so … calmly cold. Not towards Parvati, of course, but Alex, who was usually made of fire, flames of passion that shot towards the sky, felt much more like ice. All sharp edges and frigid winds. A quiet surety that she would see her goal accomplished, no matter what it took, and that she wasn’t going to wait any longer to accomplish it.

“I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” she added, and you couldn’t help but believe her a hundred percent.

* * *

Byzantium was a nightmare because it was a dream come true.

You couldn’t help, looking up at the skyscrapers that brushed heaven, wanting to be able to come into and leave them at will. You couldn’t help wondering what kind of meals the ultra-rich were provided with every day. You couldn’t help dreaming of a life lived in the lap of luxury, where you need not even rise from your bed to get everything that you wanted.

Alex was no stranger to this wanting. She hated everyone here, of course, hated everything about them, because how fucking dare they when the rest of the planet was living like it was. How dare they turn their backs and pretend people like Alex and Parvati and Della and Viral and Dameron weren’t starving to death out in the company towns, whose company owners were unafraid to do anything because it wasn’t them that faced the consequences but rather the working people. But of course as Alex walked through the streets of Byzantium in her holographic disguise, she was overwhelmed by the desperate want to live here, even if her hatred for everyone meant she stayed in her room and rose only to eat and use the bathroom, never seeing another living soul for fear she might fly into a rage interacting with them.

To eat. Where she had once dreamed of things anyone else would dream of, she now dreamed only about food. Having enough to fill her stomach, or even enough to quell the tempestuous hunger within her that never quieted itself for even a second. How blasphemous, that someone should go without food so long that their unconscious mind would conjure images of it just to satisfy what little it could? As if saying “I’m trying so hard; this is all I can do for you”.

She was lost enough in her thoughts to almost bump into a man wearing a suit that likely cost more than the apartment building she was living in right now. Not just her apartment -- the entire  _ complex _ .

Her fingers lifted briefly to sign at him before she remembered, suddenly, that she was no longer among her friends at Roseway.

“Sorry,” she said sweetly, audibly, flashing what she assumed was this woman’s dazzling smile. “I must have been daydreaming.”

The man just narrowed his eyes at her and stalked off. Alex was sorely tempted to stick her tongue out at him. Or spit at him. That would have been nice, too. Though that would have gotten her arrested way faster.

She wanted very badly to knife at least one of these fuckers, leave them bleeding on the pavement, crying for help. For them to feel even a fraction of the pain of the people they kept under their boots, and didn’t even think twice about. To feel the pain of dying without anyone coming to save you. That was what happened every single day in places like Roseway. People dropping dead, having finally put up with everything they could put up with. Their bodies spent, their minds broken.

She settled for channeling her anger into her pace and by the time she had gotten to the Rockwell Plaza she probably looked like a crazy person, pissed off at nothing and storming up to the building’s outside security as if they, personally, had slighted her, despite the fact she’d never seen them before, and vice versa.

She lifted the briefcase she was carrying before they could get a word out. “Mr. Rockwell’s,” she said abruptly. She cut it off there, because even though it was obvious why  _ she _ didn’t know that Felix took special medication, she wasn’t sure that the members of Byzantium did, either. It seemed like the sort of thing that a bazillionaire chairman would keep secret about his charismatic golden-boy son.

One of the guards raised some sort of scanning device Alex had never seen to her temple. For a moment, her heart stopped, thinking they had easily found the holographic shroud, which was supposed to be invisible when activated, but the guard simply nodded and said, “Go on through to front desk security.”

Alex walked into the building and was immediately sledgehammered with the terrible beauty of it.

The entire thing -- walls, floors, columns -- was made of marble. Gorgeous, ornate marble that was so clean Alex could see her own muddled reflection in it as she passed by one of the columns. Doors on either side of the lobby she was currently in led off to places that surely were not the one she was looking for; she didn’t think Felix Rockwell would be given a room so close to where the relatively common people came to … well,  _ what _ they came to do, Alex didn’t rightly know. Air their complaints, maybe? Was that what a chairman was for? She knew there were a lot of important meetings about the future of the system he attended, but other than that, she’d never had reason to study up on his actual responsibilities. Anyway, it didn’t seem like many of them had gotten in in the past. The line at the front desks, which were positioned left and right of the line and faced each other, just in front of a pale red security wall, consisted of only a few people.

Alex felt very small and alone in such a large, empty space like this, surrounded by so many things that were thousands and tens of thousands of times worth more than her life, or at least how anyone in this place regarded it. Her anger was still present, but it was a tiny ember in the cold vacuum of space; there was so  _ much _ around her that it was suffocating.

When she got to the desk (she didn’t remember walking there, all she remembered was putting one foot in front of the other and somehow she had ended up there) she barely heard the armored man at the desk asking her what she was there for. Her actions and her words were automatic; when the man buzzed up to Chairman Rockwell’s and he confirmed her appointment, the noise was nothing more than static in the background. She was having an existential crisis right there in the middle of the lobby, and the confidence that she had been blessed with all her life had suddenly slipped away down a dark hole where she couldn’t reach it.

The man at the front desk quirked an eyebrow and said, “Ma’am? Your hands are shaking.”

“Right …” Alex had to pull the English language from the far corners of her mind and methodically put the words together to make sentences, like a kindergartener learning how to do a puzzle. “I just … I’m doing a cleanse … haven’t eaten today.” She swallowed. “It’ll pass. Thank you for your concern.”

Before he could question her anymore, she speed-walked to the elevator and punched the button for the penthouse suite, flashing the clearance that the holographic shroud gave her, and settling against the back corner of the elevator car, where she could feel her shoulder blades pressing against the polished mahogany of the walls. It grounded her enough that she could feel her head stop spinning so violently. Thank God, she thought. If she’d had to stay in that large open space that reminded her exactly how little she was worth, she was going to pass out right then and there. At least here in the elevator, fancy as it was, there wasn’t so much to make her feel like she was insignificant.

The elevator ride lasted far too short for her liking. Before she was quite ready, the doors slid soundlessly open, and she found herself staring at an unoccupied hallway, with exotic plants decorating the walls every few feet, and massive paintings -- more like murals, really -- covering what space the plants didn’t. Like most murals, they depicted events that had never taken place, mostly about the Board’s incredible exploits and the personal achievements of Chairman Rockwell. Alex wanted to watch them burn in a fire in the central square.

The hallway was hardwood, and every step she took down it echoed painfully. She wanted so badly to go back into the elevator and isolate herself from sound and sight, but if security didn’t already know something was wrong, they definitely would if people got onto the elevator to go elsewhere in the building and Alex was still there, curled into a ball, shaking and trying to breathe.

So she forced herself to continue. As a distraction, she studied some of the murals she passed. One of them caught her attention, not because it was yet another lie about Chairman Rockwell, but because it featured Felix Rockwell instead, at an age where he would have been a young teenager. Wrapping around his left arm were red tattoos that seemed to … glow? Or at least the paint made it look that way. The painting was of him sitting on some sort of throne in front of a dark backdrop, with white banners unfurling from the ceiling emblazoned with the crimson initials of the HHC. In the painting, Felix looked every bit a cocky and smug asshole, the way she thought of him already, so to Alex this one was right on the money. A child emperor, set to take over the throne of a kingdom that willingly starved its subjects to death.

But what were those tattoos? Now that Alex thought about it, she had never seen Felix with short sleeves. His arms had always been covered, even during the hot weather. Was it to hide the markings on his skin? And if they were indeed tattoos, why would he go to such a length to hide them when he’d chosen to get them? Was he ashamed of them? Were they considered unprofessional?

But then why was there a mural right in front of her that proudly depicted them?

She stood there staring for a long time, lost in thought, a welcome distraction from the lightheadedness she’d been feeling. But when the door down the hall opened suddenly and a tall, authoritative-looking man walked out and shouted “Hey! You’re not supposed to be up here!” she was yanked back to the present.

In a second, she had dropped the briefcase containing Felix’s medication, and the familiar adrenaline rush of fighting flooded her veins the same as it always had. She assumed the holographic shroud had worn off during her distraction, so she didn’t care about keeping up appearances. She crouched and rushed forward, feinting left about halfway through -- a move that always confused people she sparred with, especially since she didn’t use it consistently. She was used to her small size and alarming speed giving her advantage over taller, sturdier opponents like this one, so she--

The world went black around the edges, and then closed in on the rest of her sight, so that the only thing she could see was a pinprick of color in the middle of it. Stunned, she hesitated -- and that was all the time the man needed to shoot her with something sharp that accelerated her freefall into unconsciousness


	3. the capture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more comments get you faster updates 0_0

Alex stood on the second floor balcony of a dimly lit room.

She felt a panic building behind her eyes and in her throat. On the floor below her were stains of something that could have been oil but looked far more like blood. Half the lights in this place weren’t working at all, and the ones that did kept flickering in and out. The only steady lights were situated on the bodies of automechanicals, who moved around the room incinerating something that Alex couldn’t make out from up here. And the smell … it was death itself. A sickly sweet, putrid smell similar to what rotting meat would smell like if it was spritzed with perfume. There was no way to describe it, really. Alex’s gorge kept rising, and she had to continue swallowing back what wanted to come out of her.

She closed her eyes -- not tight, not forcefully, just enough to try and pretend she wasn’t here, wherever ‘here’ was. Just a touch.

She felt tears slide down her face from behind her closed eyelids.

When she opened them, she was staring into the face of Felix Rockwell.

She screamed, immediately, a painful, raging thing, made up of all the anger she had felt towards him ever since she first laid eyes on him. It was indistinguishable from an animal, except for the thick human emotion that no animal could ever hope to come close to. Instantly, she sprang to her feet from wherever she was laying down and tackled him so that one hand cupped his jaw, shoving it back, her feet pinning his legs to the bed. His arms were free, but she didn’t need more than a second to do what she was going to do. She reached into her pocket with her other hand, wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her knife, and--

Wait.

Where was her knife?

Horrified, she searched her pocket for it in frantic movements, but came away with nothing.

Felix was laughing.  _ Laughing. _

“Well,  _ that _ was something!”

“You-- you-- shut up! I’m trying to kill you!” It wasn’t like there was much else someone could mistake her for doing. “Where the  _ fuck _ is my knife?! What did you fucking do with it?!”

Felix lifted his head a bit from where it was in its upside-down position, hanging off the edge of the bed -- because that’s where Alex had been, a bed.  _ His _ bed? Well, there’d be time to investigate later, when his corpse was bleeding out on it and ruining the five-billion-thread count sheets. “I--”

She shoved his head back down. “Shut up, I didn’t fucking tell you to speak.”

“You kinda did, though?”

Alex’s hand tightened around Felix’s throat. She brought her other hand up to join it until she could feel his pulse hammering away beneath her fingers. Yes, this was what she’d wanted. To watch him give his last dying gasps. To see the life drain from him. It was … it felt different than she thought it would, but not  _ upsetting _ , just … not the rush of satisfaction she was hoping for. Maybe she’d get it when he had passed from this world to the next and couldn’t hurt anybody.

Felix’s hands came up to curl around her wrists, and her eyes darted to the glowing red of the tattoos she had seen in the portrait out in the hallway. She hated to admit it, but she was transfixed. They really  _ were _ glowing, in a soft vermillion that was oddly comforting.

And then she heard him in her head.

(  _ Hey, you haven’t even told me your name yet! _ )

His blase attitude about literally being killed was beginning to piss her off even more, enough that that lightheaded feeling was beginning to come back. “I don’t know what the  _ fuck _ that was,” she hissed, “or how you spoke in my fucking mind, but you’re gonna quit it, or I’m gonna make you fucking regret it.”

(  _ What are you gonna do to me that you think I’ll regret worse than dying? _ )

“Jesus, you are SUCH a little shit!”

No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than that sudden blindness was back. Disoriented, she felt her hands weaken on Felix’s throat, enough for him to pry her hands off of him and what felt like gently guide her backwards so that she was lying down on the bed again. She couldn’t see much beyond smears of color, but her head sank into the pillow, and she felt that their weight balance had changed, that she no longer had the upper hand, and that if she tried to repeat the same attack she’d done just a moment ago, she would have gotten no further than an inch off the mattress before she passed out.

“Shhh,” she heard Felix whisper. “Shhhhhh. Relax. Go back to sleep. Okay?”

She couldn’t formulate sentences, but she could still formulate words -- barely.

“Your … voice … I’m …”

“I know. Just listen to it and obey, okay?”

“No … not that … I’m …”

She struggled to get out the next word. She was already asleep, for all intents and purposes. But the ghost of it passed her lips.

“... immune.”

“Wait -- what?”

But soft, even breaths came from Alex, and she disappeared into unconsciousness.

* * *

Her sleep this time was dreamless. It seemed to pass in only a few moments, and when she awoke, it was because someone had come into the room with food.

The famine was so widespread by now that she would have been able to smell food buried underground. Instantly, her eyes flew open, and she was met with the sight of Felix Rockwell, in an extra-extra-large HHC shirt that draped itself around his body and pajama pants. His hair was softly tousled, the way she might imagine it would look when he had just woken up and run his fingers through it, and he was sitting across from her on the huge bed the both of them were situated on, a gentle smile playing on his lips. Between them was a bed-table, on which was a spread of breakfast items -- pancakes, toast with butter and jelly, eggs, breakfast rolls, and some things Alex didn’t even know the name of. Off to the side were a few cups -- one filled with orange juice, one with milk, and one with coffee.

“I didn’t know what kind of stuff you liked,” said Felix, embarrassed. “So I kinda brought it all? I-- whoa!”

Alex hadn’t even waited for him to finish speaking. Despite her hatred of the boy in front of her, she’d literally been dying from starvation. While there was a fork and knife opposite the beverages, she ignored them completely, shoveling everything in front of her into her mouth with her hands as quickly as possible, as if she was afraid Felix was going to change his mind and take it away.

“Hey, you’re going to get sick if you don’t slow down!” Felix cried.

He was right. Alex knew it. And yet, her stomach desperately wanted everything in front of it to be inside of it,  _ right now. _ But of course Felix wouldn’t know anything about that. He’d never had to go without food in his life. He couldn’t know just how impossible it was to stop yourself from acting like this when it had been years since you’d had enough to eat.

But she couldn’t let the food come back up. It was right here, in front of her, finally, and if she let it come back up she’d be eating for nothing, just as emaciated and starving as she’d been before. Hesitantly, she slowed herself -- and found that she didn’t even need to, really, because she was full after only half the table. Right, she thought, her stomach had probably shrunk to the size of a walnut with how little food it had had access to for years. Fuck.

She brushed at the tears building in her eyes.

Felix, distressed, moved a bit closer, carefully, though, like he was afraid she was going to jump him again. “Don’t cry! I’m sorry if I screwed it up somehow. I’m not a great cook. Actually, I mostly just know how to make breakfast foods, so that’s what I made, even though it’s like 11p.m.”

“I’m not crying at that, you idiot.”

“Ouch. Oookay. Uhm, I guess if you wanna tell me … ? Then you can? But if not, then like … ah, jeeze.” Felix groaned. “I’m not good at this, huh?”

“I’m  _ crying _ ,” Alex snapped, vitriolic, “because I forgot how good food tasted.”

“Oh. Right.” Felix’s eyes traveled down Alex’s body, hesitating at her ribs, which he could count even from here, and her thin legs with the bony, knobby knees. Alex knew she looked terrible. But she didn’t bother hiding it from him. Let him see what the people he aligned himself with had done. Let him see what he had contributed to. Let him see it, in all its ugliness.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why the fuck would you feed me?”

She’d waited until she already had it in her body to ask. That way he couldn’t change his mind and take it from her.

Felix was flabbergasted. “Because you were so hungry that you passed out.”

Oh. That’s what had happened. A mixture of that and the panic she’d been feeling earlier down in the lobby had lowered her constitution enough that she’d passed out because of it.

“But I want you dead,” she said flatly. In the present tense, because she still did, but she was intrigued enough -- and weak enough -- not to try a second time, at least not right now. Her eyes drifted to the tattoos on his arm, not glowing any longer, but just as eye-catching. She’d at least get the answer to  _ that _ before she tried again.

“Yeah, uh, we’re gonna have to talk about that.” 

Felix rubbed the back of his neck nervously. It was a strange action for him to take. Alex was used to the charismatic golden boy she saw on the aetherwave who used his powers to subdue the masses, keep them satisfied with the hell they were enduring. Not this very human (maybe?), very vulnerable boy she saw in front of her. And especially not one who would see someone that was starving and feed them from his own personal reserves. It was enough to make her head hurt.

He brought his knees up to his chest and looped his arms around them. It was a position that said he wasn’t worried about Alex going after him again, and she was sure it wasn’t because of his powers, because now he knew that they didn’t work on her. Was he really that comfortable around someone who would literally slit his throat if given the chance?

“You said you were immune to my voice?” he asked, eyes wide, intrigued. Not at all the sort of expression that should follow a revelation like that. He should be just as angry with her as she was with him. Livid that he couldn’t control her.

She stared at him, trying to beam all the hatred she felt for him straight into his mind so he could feel how much she despised him. “Right. I don’t know why, but everyone else where I’m from has to use earplugs and I don’t. You know we can’t even talk to each other? We have to use fucking sign language.” Not that she disliked it. Sign language was interesting and she had liked learning it. It was the reason behind it that she hated. The fact that she had been forced to learn it because of someone whose voice controlled the minds of others.

Felix didn’t look apologetic about it, really, but he didn’t look overjoyed, either, the way she thought he might. There was no sadism in his expression, no glee that he’d had that much of an effect on peoples’ daily lives.

His tattoos glowed, and he said, in a voice that left no room for question, “Lay back down.”

Alex remained where she was, still sending all her hatred at him.

“Wow.” Felix laughed incredulously as his tattoos lost their light again. “That’s amazing.  _ You’re _ amazing! What’s your name? I  _ have _ to know.”

“You don’t  _ have _ to know anything that I don’t want to tell you. But … it’s … Alex.”

He wasn’t going to get a last name from her. Not right now. Not when there was so much at stake if he did. As it was, spending more than a few minutes with him had put the entire town of Roseway at risk. Then again, Roseway had been left to the rapts, and Byzantium had shown just how little they cared about anyone outside of their isolated city. But if they learned that someone from it had tried to assassinate the chairman’s son … they might be led to make an example out of it.

Why, oh why had things turned out like this! All because he had taken her knife away while she had been unconscious. If she’d had some other kind of weapon on her, then Felix would be dead and she’d have destroyed Byzantium’s most valuable weapon.

“Alex,” Felix repeated, trying out the name. He seemed to like the taste of it in his mouth.

He really didn’t have any clue how serious any of this was. She’d tried to kill him, and he was feeding her and saying her name because he liked it and telling her she was amazing for being able to resist his mind control.

Alex didn’t get Felix Rockwell. Not one bit.

She glanced around the room to take in her surroundings, the way she always had when in new and unfamiliar territory, so that she could have an escape route if needed. Everything was that sterile sort of feeling she was learning to expect from Byzantium, like even by standing on the ground she was dirtying it. But at the same time it was a little bit homey. The bed she was in was off to the right side of the door, in a sort of little nook, by itself, with real paper books lining the shelves on either side. She was tempted to reach over and take one out; she hadn’t seen physical books in many years. Books -- at all -- were reserved for the rich anyhow. Past the bed, out in the main body of the apartment, were several chairs and sofas, all with different varieties of throw pillows scattered across them haphazardly. Not at all the meticulous interior design Alex would have expected from someone like Felix Rockwell. The apartment wasn’t dirty, really, just … lived in. Human. Not just for show, the way she knew rich people liked to live, minimalist, as if they had no possessions at all, because, unlike her, they could  _ afford _ to have no possessions at all. They didn’t have to hoard furiously, knowing that they needed stock to last them through whatever pandemic was afflicting them this time, like Alex did. 

She couldn’t see to the far left or the far right, but on the other side of the room from the foot of the bed was an enormous floor-to-ceiling window that stretched nearly the whole apartment on that side. Beyond it rose the impossible spires of the rest of Byzantium, a reminder every single day of the luxury everyone in this city enjoyed, and, with the way the buildings obscured anything past the city walls, a wall separating Felix from having to acknowledge the consequences of his actions.

Felix must have noticed her looking around, because he unfolded himself and jumped off the bed. “You probably guessed, but this is my room.” He thrust out his hand, all smiles and wide-eyed childlike excitement. “Do you wanna see the rest of it?”

“No!”

Felix winced.

“What I  _ want _ is my fucking knife back, and I want you to … to let me go!”

Truthfully, now she really did want to leave. Her anger still boiled in the bottom of her stomach, but she was thinking rationally now. Understanding that she had to get out of here as soon as possible, regroup, and figure something else out. It was going to be an incredibly uphill battle, especially since Felix would probably notify security the second she had left, but she didn’t want to be here anymore, where she didn’t understand anything that was going on. Being in Byzantium was suffocating her. Being surrounded by all this opulence was so incredibly uncomfortable. She didn’t belong here. She needed the comfort of Roseway, as horrible and destitute as it was. She’d said that Roseway Apartments wasn’t a home, but it was a million times more of a home than Felix’s penthouse Byzantium apartment where the single pillow she was leaning back against cost more than she could ever raise in her entire life.

And part of her  _ sort of _ wanted to apologize, when she saw the hurt in Felix’s eyes, the confusion, the questions, but that was because she was a good person. Of course she’d want to apologize if she hurt someone, no matter who they were. Because unlike the person standing in front of her, she had  _ humanity. _ And  _ empathy. _

Felix was biting his lip, the hand he’d extended to her now rubbing at the back of his neck nervously. He’d averted his eyes. “Uh, okay. Well, uhm, aren’t you, like … going to go right back to being hungry, and all? If you go back? There’s not a whole lot of food to go around, right?”

Alex scoffed. “Yeah, because of  _ you _ .”

Though that wasn’t entirely true, was it? Felix wasn’t the one keeping the food from people. He was just using his voice to placate them into not getting angry that there wasn’t enough food. More likely, it was the Board’s fault. Probably hoarding all of the food for themselves, if Alex knew anything about them at all. And Felix’s father, Chairman Rockwell, head of the Board.

But of course that still didn’t make Felix innocent.

He sighed heavily. “Can I just … like, can you stay? For a little bit? I’ll feed you and if you want, I can ask the doctors to take a look at you. Everyone says the places outside Byzantium are dealing with plague and such. I’d feel real awful if I let you go back somewhere like that without taking care of you first.”

He glanced at her hopefully, and then back away, as if ashamed of himself.

“If I let the doctors take a look at me, they’re going to wonder why I was in your rich-boy penthouse in the first place.”

Felix’s shameful look melted into a wide grin.

“I’ll deal with that one.”


	4. the initiation.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex learns a horrifying secret that fundamentally changes her perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i ... thought i posted this ? but i guess i didn't. wild.
> 
> anyway. i have quite a few more chapters after this written. so no worries. sorry for the small hiatus there. could have sworn i was up to date. oh well.
> 
> hope everyone is doing alright! i'm still working eight hours a day six days a week and spending the rest of the time playing animal crossing. living the dream. i hope you all got your stimmy and bought yourself something nice with it. or paid a bill or something. god, that's depressing.
> 
> parkour!

Years of treating himself had left Alex distrusting of doctors. He couldn’t remember ever having gone to one, and now that he’d spent so long giving himself makeshift first-aid, he didn’t trust anyone else, except  _ maybe _ Parvati, and sometimes not even then, with the intricacies of how all of his systems worked. His refusal to cooperate was surely pissing off the nurse trying to treat him.

For example, she kept trying to offer him more blankets.

Full-body shivering, Alex said through gritted teeth, “I’m fucking toasty. If I was any warmer, I’d be in hell.”

“Now I  _ know _ that isn’t true. Can you cooperate with me? Just a little bit? Mr. Rockwell told me to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible--”

“Yeah, I bet he did,” Alex said under his breath.

“--and that’s not going to be easy for me to do if you keep fighting me at every turn.”

The only time that Alex did cooperate was when the food came. It was specially curated for him and included, from what he could gather, a mixture of vitamins and supplements that were supposed to kickstart Alex’s body into performing, if not optimally, at least better than the shambling wreck it was right now, but it could have been wet gravel for all Alex cared. He would have eaten anything at that point, beneficial or not. Thankfully, it  _ wasn’t _ wet gravel, but the richness of it had his gorge rising all the same. He had to take his time, eating one forkful, waiting a moment, and then continuing. It was long enough of a pause to have put his fork down in between bites, but Alex had grown up in such a state so as to be terrified of anyone taking his food away if he looked like he was so much thinking about being finished.

Of course, he was in here in the first place for malnutrition, so the nurse likely wouldn’t have taken his food even if he’d wanted her to. As it was, she was annoyingly thorough about making sure he was on the mend.

The part of him that continued to be intrigued about Felix’s powers watched the nurse as she went about her duties. Alex was her only patient, what with her being Felix’s private nurse. There wasn’t much else for him to do but to watch her as she moved not unlike an automechanical around the apartment, mostly taking care of him, when she could, but during the stretches that there was nothing for either of them to do, she usually went and sat on one of the ivory couches, and not in a comfortable way either but in a way that suggested she was little more than a mechanical doing Felix’s bidding. Alex knew she wasn’t, of course, she was as human as him or as anyone else, but the way she so emulated them unnerved him.

He itched to ask her if she knew she was hypnotized, but at the same time he didn’t know the extent of Felix’s power, not personally, and he didn’t know what would cancel the thrall he held over people, if anything. He wasn’t well enough to think about subduing someone yet. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally fuck up the hypnotism, send her running for help, try and fail to catch her, and then be lying prostrate on the floor when the authorities arrived, helpless to resist arrest. Or, more probably, death, if they caught him up here without Felix to defend him.

He wrinkled his nose. Felix, defending him. That was a weird thought. Not at all in line with what he’d been pushing to the other Roseway residents as Felix’s character. But, weirdly enough, he couldn’t see Felix giving him up to the police or condemning him to death. Really weird, when he’d been hellbent on that being the kind of person Felix was for so incredibly long.

Even now, with Felix out at some publicity thing, he wasn’t really worried. There was a paranoia that rested at the back of his mind and always had, about everything, constantly, because you didn’t grow up in a place like Roseway in a financial situation like Alex’s and  _ not _ see danger around every corner, but it was no more heightened than his regular paranoia. He didn’t see Felix coming back to the apartment flanked by guards that would throw Alex into a cell and leave him to rot.

Which was very strange. He was beginning to get paranoid about not being paranoid.

The whole day passed by, with Alex dozing off a few times, though not for more than a few minutes at a time. He wasn’t sure if Felix’s power had an expiration point, although his knowing he was going to be gone the whole day pointed to no. Still … Alex was in the heart of enemy territory. Which felt strange to say as he laid back on Felix’s bed, watching out the window as the sun moved through the sky, eventually settling behind the shining buildings of Byzantium and painting the city a stunning warm golden-orange.

As he gazed at it, he wished more than anything Parvati had been here. He missed her terribly, and while she had always prided herself on her engineering skills and spent more of her time in the guts of her project for the day, covered in grease, than she did walking around the outside world, she had always been a romantic at heart. She would have gasped at the sunset and said something beautiful to go with it, something she didn’t even have to think about, not like Alex would. He had never been any good with semantics.

He was so lost in thought about Parvati that when the door to the apartment opened, he flinched, his hand automatically going to his pocket for his knife before remembering it wasn’t there any longer. He’d been dying to spend the day looking for it, but he’d felt the nurse’s watchful eyes on him when he got up to use the lavatory and to stretch his limbs, so he hadn’t gone any further.

Luckily, it was just Felix. He walked in with a wide smile on his face, just like always, dressed in a smart three-piece suit and tie - similar to the outfits Alex had seen him in on the aetherwave, but not quite the same. How rich did you have to be to have multiple suits that looked almost exactly like each other? Alex was tempted to ask why a person would even need multiple suits like that, but stopped short when he realized that the residents of Byzantium could afford to think about things like clothing and how often a person repeated their outfit. He exhaled through his nose forcefully, pissing himself off just by thinking about it. Alex had never worn a suit in his life.

No one was trailing behind Felix, or at least they’d stayed behind on the elevator when escorting him, so Alex let his guard down. Just slightly, though; the only person he’d ever let his guard fully down around was Parvati, and even that took months of hanging out with her almost every single day.

“Mr. Rockwell,” the nurse said from across the room, giving a mechanical bow.

“Hi, Laurine.” Felix nodded at her, the kind of nod that businessmen seemed to have known since birth, just a quick, simple movement, though one that people in any other profession had a hard time replicating exactly. He was already at work removing his suit jacket, and once he’d gotten it off, he rolled up the sleeves of his gray button-down. Alex watched in fascination as the tattoos on his left arm came into view and began glowing softly. “You won’t remember any of this, Laurine. If someone asks, you spent the day deep-cleaning the apartment and looking for irritants or anything else that would compromise me. You don’t know the person you spent the day treating. You’ve never seen him before. You don’t even know his name.”

Throughout all this, Laurine was nodding, her eyes wide.

“Okay. You can go. Thank you, Laurine.”

She blinked blankly at him. “For what?” And it was obvious she really didn’t know.

“Exactly.”

He opened the door for her and waited until she had gotten on the elevator at the end of the hall. When he was certain they were alone, he closed the door and moved quickly across the room to Alex, grinning again. With no hesitation, he climbed onto the bed next to Alex, who recoiled, alarmed. It didn’t seem to phase Felix, though, who was looking up at the ceiling, hands intertwined across his stomach, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“What a day,” he said. Like he had just fucking come back from a nine-to-five at the office.

Alex didn’t answer for a long time. He was tempted to get out of the bed and move to the opposite end of the apartment, but like usual, Felix was intriguing. He didn’t act the way that people typically acted. He threw Alex for a loop at every turn. It was disconcerting in a situation that was already extremely fucking disconcerting.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“How can you just … do that to people?”

“Hm?” Felix looked over at Alex, innocence written all over his face. His smile had hesitated -- he was confused.  _ Confused. _ “What do you mean?”

“Brainwashing people. Using your powers to make them think they did shit they didn’t do. To … to take control of them.”

Felix’s eyes dropped briefly to the tattoos swirling around his arm. “Uh … would you rather I have called someone to have you arrested?”

"No! I’d rather you let people think for themselves instead of telling them what they’re supposed to be thinking!”

Clearly, Felix was a stranger to outbursts against him. He sat up, turned ninety degrees so that he was facing Alex, and cocked his head. “So you want me to let Laurine call someone to have you arrested.”

“Agh! No!”

Too frustrated to continue, Alex drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them.

“Sorry, I … I just don’t get it,” said Felix.

“I know you don’t, you stupid shit.”

“Could you stop calling me names like that?!”

His tone was so forceful that Alex couldn’t help looking at him. Not forceful like he was trying to mind-control him, but assertive. Felix’s perfect features were twisted into an expression of genuine hurt.

“Do you think I like being called stuff like that? ‘cause you keep doing it.”

“Of course I don’t think you like it. I’m not saying it to … what did you think I was doing, trying to make you happy? By calling you stupid and swearing at you?”

Felix was silent.

“Oh my god,” said Alex. He’d realized exactly what was going on here. “You’re not used to being disliked by anyone. Like, by  _ anyone. _ You can’t handle the fact that I genuinely hate your guts. Holy shit.” He dragged his hands down his face. “I thought you were self-centered, but man, this is something else. And to think I was starting to kind of come around to you.” He shook his head, bewildered. “So what happens if someone doesn’t like you? You just use your fucking sorcerer’s magic and  _ make _ them like you? Don’t even answer that. I can see from your expression that’s fucking exactly what you do. You’re a real fucking piece of work, Felix Rockwell.”

Felix opened his mouth to reply, but a knock on his door interrupted him.

“Felix?”

He straightened up instantly. “Oh, shit,” he whispered, “that’s my dad. Alex, I need to hide you.”

“Why? Because if you let me get caught while I still hated you, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself, ‘cause there’s someone out there in the world who doesn’t think you’re God’s gift to mankind?”

Alex was speaking at a normal volume, and Felix was terrified. “Look, you can be mad at me later, but right now, we  _ have _ to hide you.”

“Felix … ?” came the voice from the door again. “I don’t want to interrupt your privacy, but I’ll use the override if I have to.”

“N-No, Dad, it’s okay! I’m coming!” He sprang off the bed and moved around to Alex, easily scooping up his frail form in his arms, startled at just how little Alex weighed. It felt more like he was carrying a large doll than a human being.

Alex was obviously about to shriek and give them both away. Felix leaned in close to his ear and said softly, urgently, “Let me keep you safe. Please.  _ Please. _ Even if it’s the last thing you ever let me do for you.”

He didn’t give him any time to answer. He bounced over to one of what had to be several walk-in closets and opened the door with his foot as quietly as possible, letting Alex down in the middle of a fifteen-foot-by-fifteen-foot room, clothes from every designer and of every style lining the walls.

“Stay here.” He lifted one of Alex’s hands to his lips and kissed the back of it. Alex was too startled to react before Felix backed away. “I’ll come get you when it’s safe. I promise.”

Without allowing Alex the chance to protest, he gently closed the door behind him.

Another knock came on the door. It was cut off abruptly as Felix slid the door open.

“We just got home,” he said.

Chairman Rockwell straightened his tie, as if he really needed to be fixing himself like that in the presence of his son. Of course, Felix and his father had never enjoyed a relationship like others must have had with their fathers. He knew that much, even if he was left in the dark on most of the other workings of the world.

“Yes, well.” The chairman cleared his throat. His eyes drifted past Felix’s shoulder, looking into his room, scanning it. “I passed Laurine Fortunato on the way up to my room. She looked … Felix, did you use your powers on her?”

This was roundabout the time when Alex would have started screaming and making noise if he had planned on doing it. Blessedly, everything within the room was quiet. The closet would have muffled his screams, but not enough that neither of them could hear it. So maybe they were in the clear after all.

“Yeah, I used my powers on her.” He hated having to lie without using them, and he wasn’t very good at it, either. He hoped his father couldn’t see the way his fingers were pale, squeezing the doorframe opposite. “She wouldn’t go home until she was like a hundred thousand percent sure my room was clear. You know how she is.”

The chairman didn’t know how she was, actually, just that she was one of the best he could have gotten for his sickly son, so he had to take Felix’s word for it. “Alright. But you know using it too much drains you.”

“I know.”

“And you used it quite a bit today.”

“Dad, I  _ know. _ I’m exhausted because of it. Can I go to sleep now?”

The chairman scanned the room behind Felix once more and sighed heavily. “I suppose. Shall I arrange for dinner?”

“I’m probably just going to sleep right through. If I wake up I’ll just make pasta or something.”

“Felix, you know I don’t like you being around an open flame.”

“Oh my god, Dad. I’m not going to hurt myself boiling water.”

“Alright. Goodnight, then.”

“‘Night, Dad.”

Like Laurine, he waited until he was absolutely sure his father was on the elevator down before he closed the door and made his way back to the closet. He pressed his hand against the door, leaning in for a moment -- listening for what, he didn’t know. He just felt like Alex should have some privacy, even though all he was doing was hiding in a closet. It felt rude, to infringe on Alex without his permission, even in a situation like this. Maybe because Alex was the only one who had ever really fought back?

“Alex,” he called. “He’s gone. I’m coming in, okay?”

He slid open the door, expecting to see Alex leaning against the wall, arms crossed, scowling at him, or maybe even all of his clothing torn from the wall and in a giant heap in the middle of the room, just something for Alex to do as a show of rebellion, even if he didn’t have anything to destroy it with. Felix was used to dealing with demure, obedient people. With Alex, he wasn’t sure what he would do from one minute to the next. He found himself thinking of him almost as a canid, wreaking destruction just for the hell of it.

Which was why he was so surprised to see not that, but rather Alex standing at the back of the closet, one hand holding his knife, the other hand holding open a door in the wall, silently staring into the secret room in front of him, tears slipping one at a time down his face.


	5. the reveal.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex allows themselves to indulge a bit and finds that she's most comfortable with a bottle of shitty whiskey in her hand. In which Felix reveals a secret to the wrong person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just moved states but somehow this chapter came out quicker than the others. nice!  
> *dabs*

“Yeah, Parvati, I’m just fine … yeah, I know, it’s really weird to hear your voice, too. I promise, okay? I’m gonna feel this situation out for a bit. I know, I know, I wasn’t expecting it, either. Alright, I’ll touch base with you soon. Yeah. I love you, Parvati. Okay, bye.”

“Everything alright?” Felix asked as Alex walked back to the booth, sliding into their seat, forgetting that the skirt they were wearing had to be brushed under their legs before they sat. Consequently, they had to get up and fix it. They didn’t entirely relish Felix’s amused smile. They already felt like the entire restaurant was watching them, which they very well might have been, except that Alex was too panicked to look around and confirm it. The same feeling of smallness they had felt in the HHC lobby was with them now, condensing their normally explosive personality into a tiny neutron star.

They nodded and slid the datapad back across the table to Felix.

He shook his head. “No, that one’s for you.”

“ … are you serious?”

“Yeah, of course. If you’re going to be here a little while, then you need to have some way of communication, right? If you look, I already put my contact information in there.”

In shock, Alex looked through the incredibly sparse contact list and saw that Felix was right. The photo that accompanied his information was startling -- they were used to seeing posed, professional photos of him, not ones like this, personal, ones he had obviously taken himself using the camera. He didn’t look arrogant like in the pictures, either. This photo of Felix made him look … well, like any other person Alex had met, just a lot better-off. His sleeves were rolled up, too, showing his tattoos,and he was giving a genuine smile to the camera. He wasn’t the kind of person who looked perfect in every shot they took. From this picture, a person could tell that professional photos of Felix had to be touched up and that he had to be told exactly how to pose. This photo looked like one of several one might find in his camera roll in an attempt to find one good enough to use for a profile picture.

“And I put that datapad’s number in mine, too. ‘cept I don't have a picture to go with it.” He lifted his own datapad. “Say ‘mantisaur’.”

Caught off-guard, Alex looked up from their own datapad -- and what a strange phrase, “their own datapad”, something they would probably only ever come across in landfills, really, since even the cheapest one was far beyond their finances -- and didn’t have time to smile - nor would they have wanted to - before Felix snapped his photo.

“Hey - give me that!”

They reached across the table for the datapad, drawing attention from the nearby tables, which at first they felt they would be chided for. But Felix simply laughed and held it out of their reach, causing them to have to climb across the bottom curve of the U-shaped booth and make a lunge for it.

They tried to ignore the fact that Felix had certainly let them grab it as they flicked through the photos at light-speed until they got to their own. There they were, sitting across the booth from Felix, their datapad in front of them, their eyes wide and startled, their cheeks … flushed? With what? Embarrassment, they guessed. Except that had come after the photo had been snapped. Well, come to think of it, it was a little warm in here. That was why they were wearing the sleeveless leather jacket they were wearing; keeping their torso warm but allowing themselves to feel the breeze on their shoulders. Underneath was a black tanktop, just in case it got  _ really _ warm, which wasn’t likely to happen, especially considering that for years they’d been shivering even on warm days, always cold no matter how many blankets they piled on top of themselves.

They narrowed their eyes as they continued looking at the photo. It was them, alright … but they barely recognized themselves. Aside from the clothing, which was much nicer than the few outfits in their wardrobe, Felix had taken them to get their hair professionally cleaned and cut, and had bought them all manner of accessories, even though they’d protested at first. They’d stopped when they’d realized that pieces like this could fetch a large sum, enough to feed everyone in Roseway for years, likely. After that, they’d happily accepted anything Felix had picked out for them.

It was incredible, really. They almost seemed to shine a little bit, like this. Even though the photo was kind of ridiculous, they appeared to be faintly glowing. Happy, for the first time in a long, long time. No doubt due to having the means to feed Roseway.

But … it was nice being here, too. Even though it had taken a few weeks of gradual acclimation to richer foods to be able to go somewhere like this fancy place to eat, Alex didn’t mind it so much. At least not when all they were focusing on was Felix. The other patrons still scared the living shit out of them.

They handed the datapad back to Felix.

“I’ll take another one if you really want me to, Alex,” Felix said, suddenly serious. “I’m not going to force you to keep that photo.”

Alex rolled their eyes and took another sip of moscato. Guiltily, they were realizing that they actually did genuinely enjoy it. “If you think you can force me to do  _ anything _ , then you don’t know me at all.”

“Right. That’s kind of the reason I was so intrigued by you in the first place, huh?”

Intrigued by them. Alex wanted to laugh. What did you call their kind of relationship? Mutual intrigue? Mutual curiosity? They kept each other guessing, that was for sure. They even kept themselves guessing. If someone had told the Alex from a few weeks ago that they would allow themselves within even a thousand feet of this place, they’d deny it at knifepoint. Let alone all the other things they had allowed themselves to do. The accessory pawning, they’d have done that, of course. But the hair? The skin treatment? The manicure Felix had paid for, with the commentary that it would keep them from being found out by any other Byzantium residents? (And maybe that was true; Alex’s nails, like every other resident of Roseway, were kept incredibly short and often had dirt caked under them. Any Byzantium tenant would be suspicious immediately. But they had to admit, it had felt  _ really _ nice. In fact, all of this had felt  _ really _ ,  _ really _ nice.) Yeah, the Alex from weeks ago would have slit someone’s throat and called them a dirty fucking liar.

“You can keep it,” Alex said. “If you want, I mean. Can’t see why you would.”

“Dunno why I’d delete it. You look pretty cute.”

There it was, that flush of warmth in their cheeks again. They prayed it wasn’t visible, that it was only a feeling. But Felix’s growing smile said otherwise.

“Little warm in here?”

“Y-Yeah.” They stared at the edge of the table, feeling very stupid. “Stop looking at me.”

“You serious? Where am I supposed to look?”

“I don’t know! Just …” They felt hyper-aware of everything; the texture of the table became suddenly incredibly fascinating, and the surrounding conversation, which had previously been quiet and ambient, felt like a roar, or maybe that was just the blood rushing to Alex’s ears. They felt awful hot. “ … just, like, I’m not used to being looked at. And now, with all the … you know, the clothes, and the jewelry, and my hair. I feel …”

“Exposed?”

“Mhm.”

Felix chuckled and lifted his cab sauv to his lips. “Gee. Can’t imagine what that feels like.”

They were saved from having to respond; the waiter appeared with their food, and Alex had to stop themselves from visibly salivating as the silver dome was lifted from their entree.

“You always act like that, no matter what it is,” said Felix after the waiter had checked to make sure everything was to their satisfaction and then left to check his other tables. “Does everything taste that good to you?”

Alex nodded. How did you explain to a person who had never wanted for anything that hunger - for food, for medical supplies, for anything - was the best seasoning? How absence really did make the heart grow fonder, but not just fonder, sometimes desperate, clutching at anything that even partially could fill the yawning, gaping hole? Felix had never, ever known anything like that. It was impossible to equate it to any experience he had ever had. So they didn’t try. They just nodded and left it at that.

It didn’t hurt, though, that the food was incredibly good. They had ordered salsa verde shrimp and gnocchi, topped with crispy almond breadcrumbs, while Felix had opted for a chickpea pasta and calabrian-tomato sauce. To share, they had ordered a za’atar white bean and kale saute -- Alex had never heard of za’atar, but Felix assured them it was incredible, and the first bite they took had them seeing stars.

“Thought so.” Felix laughed at the moans Alex couldn’t hide as they ate. “Za’atar is one of the spices we’ve always had in our kitchen. I’ll have to make you manaqish sometime. It’s really something else.”

“And when you say  _ you’ll _ make it, what you really mean is …”

There was more sheepishness in Felix’s tone than Alex had expected when he admitted, “Okay, so I was gonna have one of my chefs make it. But I don’t have to. I just don’t know I’ll be that good at cooking. I don’t know how much of the talk between my dad and I you heard a few weeks ago, that first day you were at my apartment-”

“None of it,” said Alex flatly. “I was kind of preoccupied with the contents of your secret room.”

“Right.”

An awkward silence befell the two of them. Well, it was awkward for Felix, anyway. Not so much for Alex, who had met his eyes and wouldn’t look away. They may not have wanted to slit his throat anymore, but they weren’t shy about making him face truths he would rather not.

“Anyway … my dad is ready to pull the emergency lever at the first sign of me doing anything as trivial as turning the damn stove on. But if you want to do it anyway, we could probably try it.”

“And when you say that, you mean you want  _ me _ to try it.”

“Well …”

“You want to give me the ingredients and then kind of stand awkwardly about a foot away and ask if there’s anything you can do, and hope that I’ll say no and to stay out of my way, because as annoyed as you are with your father for insinuating you’d get hurt opening the refrigerator, the truth is you’re actually kind of concerned that you would.”

Felix rested his chin on his closed fist, eyes twinkling. “You’re so introspective. That’s incredible.”

The flush came back to Alex’s face. Thanks, they thought, thanks for showing up at literally the worst fucking time and making me look like a … like a fucking softie, or something.

“Stop complimenting me. You’ve done that since I showed up in this-” They stopped themselves from all the adjectives they wanted to say, and only because they were surrounded by people. “-city, and it’s weird, and I don’t- I don’t know, it just gets. Weird.”

“You already said ‘weird’. And most people like compliments.”

“I thought you would have learned by now I’m not ‘most people’.”

“So you really don’t like them?”

Alex exhaled through their nose and turned their face away. Law knew they couldn’t stare Felix down when they were like this, especially when their verbal faculties were … er, suffering, to put it lightly. “It’s not that I don’t like being complimented. It’s just that, you know …”

They trailed off, hoping Felix would finish for them. He didn’t. He watched them curiously, eyes still shining. “I don’t know, actually. Tell me.”

“It’s- it’s just- I don’t know how to react to something like that! Like, you’re telling me I’m amazing and incredible and it’s like, what? You think that? Why would you think that?” They were eating now, while they were talking. Felix had never seen anything like it. Even when he was very young, he and the other children deemed appropriate to spend time with him had always spoken, taken a bite, placed their fork down, wiped their mouths, and then spoken again. Even now, he was sure his food was getting cold, but he refused to eat while he was engaged in conversation. Not that he thought Alex disgusting for it. They weren’t talking  _ through _ their food. It was just that they were eating with equal importance to their speaking. Unknowledgeable of social graces.

Like most things about Alex, it was refreshing. It felt like he had been running a race his whole life that he hadn’t even known he’d been running until he’d looked over and seen Alex on the sidelines.

“-and, like, I don’t know. Tell me at least some of that made sense to you.”

As they wiped their mouth, Felix realized he had completely zoned out thinking about them. He wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or entire minutes, but he blinked and straightened up. “Uh …”

“Oh, do  _ not _ tell me you weren’t listening.”

“It wasn’t because I was bored or anything, honest! I was just … thinking about you.”

Alex groaned. “Well, guess all of that was useless, then.”

He was surprised to see that they had finished their meal while he was spaced out. Seeing him eyeing their bowl, Alex said, “What, worried I’m gonna ralph it or something? I’m not. I’ve eaten bigger meals than this the past few weeks. I should be fine now.”

“No, I just … you’re never supposed to, like,  _ finish _ it.”

Alex narrowed their eyes. “Felix, I’ve tried over the past few weeks to be real understanding of you considering what I saw in the room in the closet-”

Felix pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes tightly. “Please don’t mention the room.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, I’ve tried to be real understanding since then, but you’ve gotta see shit from my perspective, too. Or at least, like, try? I’ve spent my whole damn life starving to death. Not knowing where my next meal was coming from or if it was even coming. If you think I’m leaving  _ any _ part of this meal behind because of some stupid fakey-fake social graces or whatever they’re called, you’re a lot more stupid than I-” They caught themselves. “-then you’re stupid.”

It was obvious the mood at the table had swung uncomfortably into awkward territory.

“You know what?”

Felix watched Alex get up, placing their palms flat on the table. He knew they must be drawing eyes, but certainly no one was going to say anything about the chairman’s son or his whoever-they-were. Likely, Alex would be the object of gossip - in Byzantium, scandalous talk was about all there was to really do, after all, once you had the money to buy everything you could ever want, the only thing you ended up wanting was drama - but that was alright. Alex could handle it, and they weren’t in danger, not right now, anyway. And Felix had ideas for what to do if they ever did turn out to need his protection.

“I think we should go get a drink.”

He let out a relieved breath. He’d assumed the worst. “Okay.”

“Really? Okay? I would have thought the chairman’s son had an image to uphold.”

They were teasing him; their eyes had a mischievous glint in them, and he felt the awkwardness beginning to dissipate.

“Yeah, maybe.” He got up, too, leaving a bit cartridge on the table for the meal, guessing the amount but knowing both that he had the funds to make up for it if he was short and also that he would never get the call telling him if he was. “But maybe I feel like being a little unpredictable for once.”

* * *

“All this money, and not a dive bar to be seen.”

Alex punctuated it with a swig of whiskey, straight from the bottle. It was one of the indulgences she’d allow herself. The food was for survival and curing her malnutrition. The accessories adorning her wrists and ears and neck were liquid assets to get Roseway back up and running. The bottle of honey whiskey she held in her hand, burning a soft fire in her stomach, just like it was supposed to? That was her reward for doing so well in the circumstances in which she found herself. A treat, for all the years of suffering she’d endured.

She and Felix were sitting on the edge of one of the lower streets of Byzantium, overlooking one of the canals that ran through the city. The rings of Terra-2 shone brilliantly in the sky and twice as brilliantly in the reflection of the water, and Alex thought it might have been beautiful, if things had been different. If her life had been different. If she had had room to find such things enchanting instead of having to fill herself up with jagged edges just to survive.

Of course, there weren’t many dive bars outside Byzantium, either. But the number inside the city was currently zero, which meant even Roseway had a hundred percent more dive bars than Byzantium. She’d had to make do with a bar with sparse outside seating, which they now had to their backs as they drank. It was the closest they were going to get to the dark, seedy atmosphere Alex was so used to and therefore comfortable with. Back in Roseway, or any other bar, really, her harsh personality fit in perfectly. Here … well, it was weird here. There were invisible rules and social cues, and the bartender didn’t even serve the drinks. Such things were taken care of by a mechanical. Which was why she’d opted for the whole bottle. Felix had offered and she didn’t really feel like going back inside a thousand times to get a strange-looking cocktail from a robot.

Felix was much slower with his liquor than Alex was with hers, and he couldn’t even take a sip without chasing it. “Maybe I could talk my dad into setting one up somewhere,” he joked.

Alex snorted. “Yeah, okay. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for  _ that _ conversation.”

“You know, I wouldn’t mind you meeting my dad.”

It was so unexpected that Alex choked on her whiskey, something she hadn’t done since she’d first discovered the drink, and barely even then. “Excuse me?”

“Uh …”

“Felix, I’m barely even comfortable with  _ you _ , and that’s after the r- anyway, what makes you think I’d want to meet your  _ father _ ? In case you forgot, he’s the reason behind … my situation!”

She didn’t dare vocalize that she was from Roseway, not in a public place like this. At this time of the night, the streets were largely deserted, and there was barely a person in sight, but Alex hadn’t gotten this far by assuming the best.

They hadn’t been looking at each other this whole time anyway, but now Felix was actively looking away from her, his face flushed. “It was stupid. Sorry.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Both of them were silent. Alex stress-took a shot of her whiskey that could have killed a small child.

Abruptly, Felix said, “It’s just- you’re the one who said you hate it when I use my powers, and-”

“To  _ control _ people, dumbass. I don’t like when you use them to make people do things they don’t want to do or be okay with things they don’t want to be okay with.”

A few more beats of silence later, Felix said, very quietly, “Please don’t call me a dumbass.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Alex hated to admit it, but she didn’t like the way the night had gone, not at all. She had gotten herself into this situation fully prepared to viscerally despise Felix Rockwell. Of course, that hadn’t quite gone as planned. For the first few days, it was easy, her discovery of the room in the closet aside - if she hadn’t seen that, she might never have come around to him. But as the weeks passed she found herself growing … fond? Sort of. She hesitated to say she liked him. She liked spending time with him, but then again, with her not being a Byzantium resident, and it being dangerous for her to go anywhere on her own, she didn’t have much  _ choice _ but to spend time with him. He was at least a constant in this confusing turn her life had taken. But he was also the reason the turn it had taken was confusing at all.

And Alex wasn’t heartless. She was a good person. She didn’t like hurting people, and she didn’t like being the reason that someone was upset.

And she’d kind of been enjoying herself, until now.

But god, didn’t Felix have any self-awareness? That was one of the reasons she’d hated him at first, and he wasn’t building himself a spectacular case now. Wasn’t he at all cognizant of what he was saying?

Sighing, she said, “I just thought … after these few weeks, I guess I thought you’d be, like, you’d  _ understand _ that, I don’t know, I’m not the person you should be speaking without thinking to. Like, if nothing else, I hoped I’d at least be able to make you think twice about what you were saying. On account of …” She didn’t have to finish. Her immunity to his voice had never been more glaringly obvious.

“Felix? Felix Rockwell?”

Alex turned around immediately, already repositioning herself to be able to jump up and run away if necessary. Where, she didn’t know. She rarely did. But she was always ready to disappear at a moment’s notice.

It wasn’t necessary, apparently. Felix turned around as well and a smile lit up his face as he took in the person approaching them.

“Nell! I haven’t seen you in ages!”

He got up to embrace her. Alex, hawk eyes scrutinizing every aspect of the newcomer, noticed that Felix was tugging down a bit on his left shirtsleeve. Even though it was already covering his tattoos, he was making extra sure that it was. She hummed to herself quietly. Interesting.

She stayed there, watching the two of them, as they performed their strange social dance that she still didn’t understand, and probably never would. She knew about small talk, of course. This wasn’t that. This was something far different. Certain topics had to be discussed. The entire thing felt like a scripted event in which choosing the wrong dialogue option would cause one person or the other to lose points. Though Felix seemed to like Nell a lot more than any of the people he interacted with on a day-to-day basis.

And why shouldn’t he? She was a pretty thing. Taller than Alex, though that wasn’t an extraordinary feat. Short, spiky hair that teetered on the edge between gray and brown. An elfish face, with colorful eyes. Her outfit was just as fancy as anyone here, a beautifully fitted three-piece waistcoat number with perfectly ironed trousers that looked like she’d put them on right off the store display. Alex almost found herself attracted to Nell. Felix certainly was.

The whiskey inside her burned now, more fire than honey. She pressed her lips into a thin line and turned back around, staring at the reflection of Terra-2’s rings in the canal. She felt herself shutting down her emotions, a coping mechanism she’d had for nearly her entire life. Let them do whatever they were going to do and say whatever they were going to say. She didn’t care. She’d just sit here and wait for them to be done, and then they’d leave, and go to bed, and then she’d wake up in the morning and do the same things she did every day, and when she was done securing a future for Roseway from the inside, she’d leave, and she’d never have to see any of this ever again.

“Oh, and this is Alex-” she heard from behind her, and she snorted to herself. Yeah, “oh”. She was an afterthought the second someone else was in the picture. What a surprise. She didn’t turn around. Let the pretty rich girl work for a change.

“Alex,” Felix said, sounding mostly authoritative but a little bit panicked. Good. “I’m trying to introduce you to someone.”

“It’s okay, Felix …” Nell attempted.

“No, it’s not,” Felix told her. “Alex is kind of rough around the edges, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to ignore you. C’mon, Alex, say hello to Nell, okay?”

She felt a heavy bassline in her ears. A sort of backing sound behind everything, behind the entire world, behind every sense she had and some she didn’t. It wasn’t all-encompassing. It was just sort of there, like hearing construction outside your window early in the morning and having it go on for so long that you didn’t notice it anymore, and only became aware of it when it stopped.

He was trying to use his powers on her, even though he knew she was immune. For something as stupid as this.

She got up from where she’d been sitting on the edge of the canal, ready to … well, not blow Felix’s secret, of course, but to at  _ least _ give him a serious death glare so that he knew exactly how she felt about what he was trying to do. Her eyes fixed on the two of them, and then the whiskey hit all at once, and the world tilted beneath her, and she felt herself slipping backwards, with nothing and no one to hold onto for balance, and she didn’t know how to swim, and even though she wasn’t dying, her life flashed before her eyes, or at least the past few weeks, anyway.

She heard Felix shout her name, and then there was a brilliant red flash of light, and Nell cried out in alarm, and she felt Felix’s hands grab her wrists in midair. From what sounded like far away but couldn’t have been more than a couple of feet she heard the bottle of whiskey hit the water, and she realized dimly that that could have been her, if Felix hadn’t dropped everything to save her.

Felix said something else back over his shoulder, and he held Alex to his chest. The rabbit-fast beating of his heart soothed her into unconsciousness.


End file.
